Shades of Grey
by Gandalf3213
Summary: When Shawn and Gus are captured by a psychopath, they suddenly have to come to terms with a lot of things. Like pain, like mortality. Like what their friendship really is, and that grey area between doing what is right and doing what is necessary.
1. Prologue

_"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." **John 15:13**_

.***.

Gus was used to saving Shawn.

Take the third grade for example, when Shawn was getting into a load of hot water for mouthing off to a bully (Gus was sure, even twenty years later, that Shawn's exact words had been, "I'm not sure t is even in your mental capacity to play kickball, Buddy, you'd better give that ball to me." Buddy hadn't known what the word _capacity_ meant but that didn't stop him from hitting Shawn.) Anyway, Gus had shown up just in time to stop an all-out beating with Shawn stuck between three beefy fourth-graders. Sure, he'd brought the teacher, and Shawn had said later that the move was "So not cool" but at least Shawn had been alive to mouth off for another day.

And then there was high school. This was when everyone was starting to get into sports and girls and futures, when Gus began dating for real and Shawn…didn't. He just wasn't into commitment and would rather spend a Saturday getting into trouble with Gus than getting into a suit for a girl. Well, there had been a rumor in the ninth grade that Shawn was gay, a rumor that his relationship with Gus didn't help at all. Gus caught wind of this rumor before Shawn did, though, and talked Shawn into taking a date with a girl before the tiny flame of suspicion could reach the full-out fire of unsubstantiated truth.

Or all those times on cases when Gus had grappled with men with weapons and anger management issues, those times when Gus had covered for Shawn, lied to Shawn's father, to the police, to the world about his best friend's "psychic" ability.

But he did it, time and time again, and he kept showing up to the office with the big green letters on it. PSYCH. A pun for the two of them, another inside joke to add to the Shawn and Gus repertoire. Because the whole truth was that Gus would do anything for Shawn.

It was sad, but true: Shawn made his life _interesting_.

So, really, it was nothing out of the ordinary for Gus to step up to the plate when Shawn's life was in danger. Nothing out of the ordinary to take a steady breath, to work past the pain of the injuries, the pain of the broken bones that he'd already received in this case, and to save Shawn's life.

Even if it meant taking somebody else's.

**The rest of the story is coming up ASAP. Just wanted to know what everyone thought of this idea.**

**Anyways, please review.**


	2. In Which Shawn Wants to Butt In

_It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly if you are really right and the person who is really wrong is the one who is proving you wrong and proving himself, wrongly, right. **Lemony Snicket**_

.***.

"Really, Jules, I think there may be more to this case." Shawn said, following Juliet around the Santa Barbara Police Department as usual.

"He confessed, Shawn. What more do you want?" Juliet collapsed into the chair by her desk, taking the cup of tea the always-helpful McNab offered her. This week-long case had taken more out of her than usual since the victim was a replica of herself. A young, driven career woman (with gorgeous blond hair, short like the Chief's. Maybe she should cut her hair?) had been murdered while trying to be a Good Samaritan, helping a man off the ground after he'd been mugged. She was about to take him to the hospital when she was mugged herself, raped and killed five blocks away from one of the busiest shopping plazas in town.

And Shawn was trying to convince her that this case wasn't over. Nuh-uh. No way was she going to ever think of this case again. She hadn't been sleeping well all week, anyway: the sight of the woman's mangled body had tortured her, for sure, but worse was her brother, glaring at Juliet from the table as they told the family about the woman's death. What had he said? "You'd better catch the right guy." That was it, but his voice was so chilling that if Lassiter hadn't been in the car with her Juliet was sure she would have either screamed or cried as soon as she left the house from the fear of it.

But they had caught the guy, and no thanks to Shawn's psychic detective work, either. No, this one had been entirely plotted and carried out by the Santa Barbara Police using good ol' fashioned fingerprinting. Turned out it was one of those weird and random acts of violence. People are killed more often by people they know, but this guy had been a total stranger to Maggie Lawson. She'd died for literally no reason at all.

Juliet shook her head, feeling goosebumps all up and down her body. Her grandmother would have said that someone was walking over her grave: it was an adage that came out every time Juliet got those weird shivers. But Juliet wasn't so sure this time. Maybe this time she was walking over somebody else's.

"But _Jules_…" Shawn almost whined, sitting on her desk and looking for all the world like a kid who was the only one who saw monsters in the closet. "What if you're wrong?"

"Let's go, Shawn." Gus said, pulling Shawn's shoulder and looking at Juliet strangely. She managed a tiny smile, but she was sure Gus had already seen right through her. He always seemed to be more perceptive about people's emotions than his psychic friend. "You going to be okay, Juliet?"

"Sure, I'll be fine," She said, rifling through paperwork without really seeing it and increasing the wattage of her smile by half. Gus stared at her for another moment before Shawn said something else about the case. He hustled his friend out of the room quickly after that, leaving Juliet sitting there, alone, with the strange goosebumps her grandmother used to say came from walking over dead things.

And Juliet had one of those hunches Lassiter was always deprecating. And this hunch said that this case wasn't over at all.

.***.

"There were two guys, Gus, I know there were." Shawn said, thinking back to the footprints he saw, one female, sure, and one the guy that had gotten mugged in the first place, but there had been two other distinct sets, Shawn was sure of it. How the SBPD could fingerprint and get results but completely disregarded things like the difference between Nike's and boots was beyond him.

"I believe you, Shawn." Gus said patiently, "But Juliet is upset about this case already, and you hanging around pestering her has never helped anything before. A little proof would go a long way."

Shawn was frustrated, and when he was frustrated his voice climbed higher and higher up the register. "That guy was the less violent of the two, Gus. That's why he confessed so easily. He was being completely dominated by the other man." Shawn paused, smirking at his own sentence.

"Shawn, do you really think this is a time to pull out all the gay jokes that just popped into your head?" Gus asked, rolling his eyes.

"Of course not, Gus, I'm never that immature." Shawn said, fiddling with the police scanner they'd stolen from his father a while ago. "I'm just saying that I'm sure this other guy will kill someone else, and that's going to hurt Juliet more than me prying into the investigation."

He suddenly pulled his hand away from the radio, staring at it in horror. Gus, who had been leaning against the windowsill with his arms crossed up until that point, stood up quickly. "What?"

"Shh!" Shawn hissed, turning up the volume in time to hear the call on again. "….Repeat, it's another 261 and 187 at the address…"

But they weren't listening any more. Both Shawn and Gus were on their feet and going for the door, because after four years of butting on police investigations they knew that 261 meant rape, and 187 was the cases they got dragged into all time. Because if a police officer called a 187, then it was definitely murder.

.***.

"He didn't get far at all." Lassiter said proudly, watching as the man got cuffed against his police car. He looked over at Shawn and Gus, standing with Juliet near where the woman had been found. "I guess this whole case it proof that the SBPD _can_ solve cases without your help, Spencer."

"But then you'd miss out on my wit, charm, and personality." Shawn said, smiling over at Juliet, hoping that she'd at least crack a small smirk. Nada.

"I can't believe this, Shawn." She said, staring at the woman on the ground who was being zipped into a body bag. "You told me that it wasn't over and I just ignore you and now this woman is _dead_!"

"Hey!" Shawn sad, wrapping one arm around her shoulder. "Jules, this isn't your fault! If anything, I would blame the psychic monkeys for not being too clear on their message. They had their mouths full when they told me about the whole case, you know, which just proves that you shouldn't eat peanut butter while trying to talk to somebody eating peanut butter, you know?"

It was nonsense, and even Lassiter came forward to try to rescue Juliet from Shawn's arms, but Gus put a hand out, warning him to stay back because it may be nonsense but it did make Juliet choke out a laugh.

"The good news is that the killers have both been caught." Shawn said, and he was stroking Juliet's hair without even thinking. Damn, it was soft. "And this time, Jules, there is no bad news."

"There is for her." Juliet said, disentangling herself from Shawn and stepping away from him, not looking at the blond being loaded into the back of the coroners van. She hurried to the edge of the crime scene, looking like she was going to be sick.

Shawn almost went after her, but Gus put out the same warning hand to him that he had to Lassiter and he stopped short, staring as the women officer leaned against the police cruiser, breathing heavily.

Lassiter threw one look over his shoulder. "Nice one, Spencer." He said, moving away after his partner, ,hands stuffed deep in his pockets, leaving Shawn and Gus to stare after him, thinking it was wrong for Lassiter to accuse anyone of being tactless.

"At least it's over." Gus said, looking down at the blood on the ground and shivering. He'd pray for this woman in church tomorrow. Sometimes it seemed like praying was the only thing he could do. "C'mon, Shawn, let's go."

"Is is just me, Gus, or has this been a really long week?" Shawn asked, pulling out the keys to the Gus's car from his own pocket as they walked away from the blood and the coroner and the crying Juliet. When there was no answer, he looked over his shoulder. "Gus?"

He was lucky he looked just in time to see Gus, bleeding from the head and definitely unconscious, being thrown into the back of a car. "Hey!" Shawn said, running after his best friend without so much as a weapon. He was so focused on Gus, hurt and bleeding, that he didn't see the fist coming out of nowhere.

**Thanks for all the encouragement for 400 words! We'll get back to that part soon enough, this one was just calling for a back story.**

**Happy New Year, all, and please review.**


	3. In Which Gus is Really, Really Hurt

_Look (Grown-ups skip this paragraph) I'm not about to tell you this book has a tragic ending. I already said in the very first line how it was my favorite in all the world. But there's a lot of bad stuff coming. **The Princess Bride**_

.***.

"Gus? Gus, man, c'mon. Gus!"

It wasn't a pleasant way to come back from the relatively pain-free blackness of unconsciousness, listening to Shawn's panicked voice in his ear, but the rough hands grasping his arm near the wrist and elbow were worse.

"No! Get off him!" Gus managed to open his eyes enough to see that they were in a back room or basement of some kind, that he wasn't tied to a chair but Shawn was bound hand and foot. And the man, the one holding his arm…he looked angry, sure, but mostly he looked like he'd fallen off the deep end. In the past four years, Gus had managed to meet some real evil guys and some psychopaths. This guy was a psychopath.

"Why are you doing this?" Shawn pleaded, and Gus tried to raise his head, tried to tell his friend not to worry, that they would be okay, that someone would notice them missing sooner or later, but he didn't get any of that out.

When his arm broke in two, there was a moment when the sound of the crack came a split second before the pain, a moment when Gus managed to look at the limb in horror before the scream came out, a moment when Shawn's mouth opened in an 'O' of surprise before he started screaming, cursing, saying words that he'd never, to Gus's knowledge, said before in his life.

"My sister is dead." The man said, his voice a quiet monotone that managed to be heard over Gus's screams. He moved forward and Gus curled into a ball, trying to protect the rest of his body but completely unable to will himself to his feet. "She is dead and your police department let another woman be killed. That is not justice."

"We're not with the police." Shawn tried, words coming out in a jumble because oh-my-God-Gus-is-screaming-and-I-can't-help. "We're civilians, not officers. God, please, no!"

The man had already brought his foot down hard on Gus's ankle, crushing the small bones under his steel-toed boot, and the screams made Shawn turn pale, made him tremble even as he tried to knock his chair over to the ground, made Gus scream louder…louder.

"My name is John Lawson." The man said, his calm voice a little louder to be heard over Gus's increased screams. "My sister is dead. I will kill him because the police have to pay and in this world an eye for an eye only seems fair." He looked blankly around the basement, seeming deaf to Gus's screams, and turned back to Shawn. "I need to get something heavy. I'll be back very soon and he will die."

Shawn barely waited for the door to _snick_ shut behind the psychopath before he started inching closer to Gus. "Gus? Gus, man, you have to stop screaming _please_. You have to reach up and get the cell phone out of my pocket and send an SOS. C'mon, buddy…shh…Gus, it's okay, it'll be okay…" Shawn was crying, unable to help his best friend who was rolling on the floor, his screams now whimpers and moans of pain. "Gus…"

Slowly, slowly, Gus managed to get his good hand into Shawn's pocket, managed to focus his pain-clouded eyes long enough on the little screen, managed to type out a message using the words Shawn had, the words that described their location and their situation, the words that didn't make sense in Gus's red-fogged brain and _God_ he wanted the pain to stop. He managed to press SEND and slip the phone back into Shawn's pocket the instant before the Lawson came back in with a crowbar.

.***.

Juliet was halfway home when she got the text. She was looking forward to a hot bath and good book and Oreos and anything else that would take her mind off of the dead young women that could have so easily been her. She almost didn't look at the text, almost put the phone down and let the outside world burn while she played the fiddle.

But she took one quick look at the screen, at the words that said SHAWN SPENCER. For a wild moment she thought that maybe Shawn felt as lonely as she did, maybe he would want some company, maybe…

So she opened the message. Opened it and read it and called Carlton, but she was already turning the car around, thoughts of a bath and Oreos and book firmly behind her as she sped in the direction of her friends who were calling for help.

.***.

Gus dropped his eyes when he saw the crowbar, breath hitching in rapid little gasps. He knew he was going to die and had tried, in the few minutes where he'd been left alone with Shawn and the pain, to come to terms with that fact, to make peace with it. But the pain, and the text, and Shawn's worry had caught him by surprise.

He was going to die. He just had to stay long enough to make sure Shawn didn't do something stupid.

"Hey!" Shawn said, and if Gus could will his body to move he would clap a hand over his oldest friend's big mouth. As it was, he could only plead with him with his eyes from the ground, a look that said, _this is hard enough, please don't get yourself killed, too._

Of all times Shawn chose to ignore body language though, this was the worse. His exclamation had done the trick. Lawson paused with the crowbar raised over his head, ready to bring it down on Gus. He looked at Shawn as if annoyed with this interruption. "What?"

"Look, I get it. I do." Shawn said, talking fast, looking down at Gus every few seconds, "Your sister is dead and we didn't do nearly enough to help you. But that's on the police department. Guster here is a civilian, I'm the detective."

"He's your friend." Lawson said, but his voice held a note of uncertainty. He looked between Shawn and Gus and, in a fit of rage, or maybe frustration, brought the crowbar down on Gus's chest.

The pain that exploded was…was unbearable, and for a terrible instant Gus was sure he was dying. _No_ he thought, clutching desperately at the last tendrils of consciousness. He couldn't die with Shawn still in danger. He wouldn't allow it.

He fought against the overwhelming blackness, wrenching himself back to reality to find that he was screaming so loud he couldn't hear what Shawn was saying. And he had to make sure Shawn wasn't saying anything that would get him killed.

Stopping his scream was one of the hardest things he had to do, but he bit his tongue and tried to breathe in. It was with this first breath that he knew without a shadow of a doubt that at least a couple of ribs were broken, and his collar bone felt as if it had shattered with the impact.

Still, he forced himself to listen to Shawn, to his best friend's pleas to save Gus's life. Now Shawn wasn't screaming along with Gus, or even raising his voice. He was telling a story.

"Look, I can't let this guy die on my watch. I'm instructed to bring him back to his house – that last victim was his girlfriend, you know, that's why he was at the crime scene with me. But if you want to hurt the police department you better start taking swings at me. I don't even know that guy. I won't lose sleep if you kill him."

It was testament to how far gone Lawson was that he didn't remember Shawn's emotional response to him breaking Gus's arm. And it was testament to how much pain Gus was in that he sucked in his breath for a moment, and one of the tears that rolled down his cheek was not from the pain in his body but from the pain of Shawn's sudden betrayal.

Lawson stood for a moment, crowbar lax in his hands, contemplating Shawn's words. "Okay." He said slowly, eyes unfocused and distant. "Okay, I'll just kill both of you."

He swung at Gus again, cracking his limbs further, and this time Gus couldn't quite hang on to consciousness. Just before he was overtaken by blackness he winged a quick prayer up to God.

_Please let Shawn live._

**This is a very different story from the one we intended to write, but we're liking where it's going. **

**Anyways, reviews are like double chocolate fudge brownies for our egos. Please help.**


	4. In Which The Calvary Arrives

___"Hello, darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again." **Simon & Garfunkel**_

.***.

Juliet knew that she should wait for back up, but it was the scream – that high, pain-filled, anguished scream that spurred her into action. She could tell, after four years, that the loud scream, the one so suddenly cut off (as if by unconsciousness, by death…) was Gus. The other scream, the one of rage, of emotional pain, was Shawn.

She pointed the gun at the ground without even thinking, ran forward on autopilot and tried as hard as she could to banish the sound of the screams from her mind. She could not allow herself to be emotionally compromised now.

If she'd had another minute, two, she would have assessed the situation from the small window and come up with a brilliant plan, something like popping in and holding the man with the crowbar (and didn't he look familiar?) at gunpoint and negotiating. She would have planned out something to say, something that would make him let Shawn and Gus go, something that would save their lives.

But she didn't have minutes, because as soon as she reached the small, lonely house another scream of pain rang out across the grounds. And this scream belonged to Shawn.

Later, she would reluctantly admit that she was emotionally compromised in this situation (she had to face these feelings later. Had to, because how else could she explain running in after Shawn's scream and not after Gus's?) Later, she would admit to a lot of things.

The scream Shawn let out made her kick open the door the same way she'd seen Carlton do so many times. Made her fly through the small house and into the blood-stained back room. Made her point her gun at the man with the crowbar, the man who looked so familiar, and say, "freeze!"

And, if it hadn't been for that scream, Detective Juliet O'Hara probably wouldn't have had a crowbar thrown at her head.

.***.

Shawn had never felt more helpless in his life.

After the man struck Gus in the chest (right near his heart, his lungs, all those organs and other vital things they learned in 10th grade Bio and Shawn promptly forgot) Shawn felt his whole world spin out of control. Gus might be alive, but if he was he could win an Oscar in looking quite dead.

His thoughts stopped after that. His whole world was reduced to his best friend lying, unmoving, bleeding, broken in front of him. Later there would be guilt (so much guilt) but right then there was only pain. Deep, gut-wrenching, unbelievable pain. And he realized the scream he was hearing was his own.

Shawn just managed to bite his tongue as Lawson raised his crowbar again. The eyes…the man's eyes weren't human anymore. They were too flat, too detached, too unemotional, and Shawn knew that running his usually quick mouth would be useless against this entity even if he did figure out how to use his voice again.

The crowbar was raised and Shawn shook the chair, fighting to get free, finding that the pain in his heart was being completely overtaken by rage. He understood, in that moment, why people turned to crime to avenge someone's death. Nothing in the world made more sense than killing Lawson.

A hard smack in his shoulder, and Shawn heard a sharp _pop_ and simultaneous _crack_. He screamed again, this one of shock, of pain, and that's when he heard the bang at the door.

Shawn was barely able to move. The ropes were tight and professional, testament to Lawson's sailing hobby. But he was still able to move his head just in time to see Juliet's shadow fall across the door. He nearly sobbed with relief, casting another quick look at Gus on the floor and hoping, praying, that he wasn't dead.

"Freeze!" Juliet said, and Shawn was ready to celebrate, ready to shout his usual greeting of 'Jules!' ready to get the hell out of Dodge. And they would have been home free if it wasn't for the crowbar, the one that hit Juliet on the head and made her crumple, taking the last of Shawn's hopes with her.

.***.

Gus fought against the cool embrace of unconsciousness and that call, soft and alluring, near the end of a long tunnel. It would have been easy (so easy) to escape the pain and follow the tunnel to wherever it led.

But there was a sound competing with the soft call, a scream from the other direction that even Gus's pain-fogged mind recognized as Shawn's. He took one last hopeful glance at the tunnel and found that the light at the end and the soft call were getting further away.

Somehow, he didn't scream when the darkness disappeared and the harsh light of the bare bulb beat against his eyelids. The pain was incredible: it seemed to radiate from every part of his body, throbbing, burning…he could feel fragments in his arm shifting under his skin.

But he didn't scream. Couldn't, because when he opened his eyes just enough to peer through the lashes he realized that Juliet was not three feet away from him, also on the ground. And her gun was within arm's reach.

Above him, he heard Shawn's voice, high and frightened and tinged red with pain. He was begging for his life and Lawson wouldn't give it to him willingly.

"Think about what you're doing here." Shawn said, his voice several octaves higher than usual but his tone completely serious. This was anything but a joke. "You're killing because your sister was killed, but why blame us? Go out and kill the scumbag that raped her and you'll have my blessing. Oww!"

The scream at the end was the clincher. Gus forced his arm – the broken one, the one he wasn't even entirely sure he could use anymore, out away from him. He opened his eyes – Lawson had his back to him, was too far gone to recognize his surroundings, anyway. And this was one time when tunnel perspective was going to save somebody's life.

If it hadn't been for Shawn, screaming, or Juliet's unmoving body, or his own _pain_, then Gus would have probably paused just long enough to remember that he was supposed to be above killing, that murder was wrong.

Later, this point would drive him to distraction, to near madness. Later, there would be guilt and anguish over this action. But right then it was Lawson, crowbar raised, ready to hurt Shawn, to kill him…

Gus steadied the gun in his hand (and later he would thank Henry Spencer for those days on the shooting range) and brought his good hand over to steady the broken one. He had one shot, and if he missed he would hit Shawn, and, anyway, unconsciousness was slowly creeping in again and he didn't know how long he could hold it off.

He got off one shot, one perfect shot, and the pain flared in his broken arm.

Hello darkness, my old friend.

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	5. In Which Help Is Just Too Far Away

_Life is pain; anyone who says differently is selling something. **Princess Bride**_

.***.

Lassiter banged open the door. He'd heard shots as he pulled up and found himself praying that O'Hara had discharged her weapon. The call he'd received from his partner had left something to be desired in the detail department: something about Spencer and Guster being held somewhere by a psycho (and, really, what else was new?) but it was O'Hara that he left for. Lassiter, who used to swear that if he cut himself he would bleed blue, knew the value of a good partner.

So the shots made him run, his own gun in hand, but it was the sight of the blood, of the bodies, that made him stop in his tracks, all the breath suddenly gone from his body. O'Hara was face-down on the ground, body splayed, blond hair like a halo around her head. The perp (or who Lassiter was assuming was the perp) was dead, shot through the head in front of the chair that Shawn was tied to.

"Spencer!" Lassiter said, crossing the room in two quick strides, eyes focused on Spencer's tight, pale face, his hitched breathing and darting eyes and low moans of pain. He reached around Spencer's body to get to the knots that bound him to the chair. "Are you alright?"

"Gus!" Spencer said, jerking away from Lassiter's hands and rocking the chair. "OhmyGod, Lassie, go help Gus!"

Lassiter looked around Spencer. He hadn't even noticed Guster on the way in, but on a second sweep of the room he wondered how he could miss the man. Limbs bent in unnatural positions, blood dripping from the body that looked, in Lassiter's professional opinion, quite dead. And he was sure that he couldn't fulfill Spencer's requests to 'help Gus.'

Still, he crossed the room in two quick strides, searching Guster's neck, his wrist, anywhere for a sign of life. And, improbably, impossibly, he got one.

Whipping out his cell phone, Lassiter punched in the numbers any preschooler knew by heart. "9-1-1, what's your emergency?"

"My name is Detective Carlton Lassiter from the Santa Barbara Police Department," Lassiter said, words tight and rushed, eyes darting between Spencer, groaning in the chair, Juliet stirring softly in the corner and Guster, dying in his arms. "I have three people in need of ambulances, one in critical condition." He gave the address without thinking, and he barely heard the operator tell him to stay on the phone. He was already moving again.

With a few deft motions he untied Spencer's hands, feeling a pang of something like pity when he saw the bruised and bleeding wrists. No doubt Spencer had been frantic to get to his friend and had hurt himself without even thinking. Even now, as soon as he was released from his bonds, he sprang forward without thinking of his broken shoulder or torn wrists.

Lassiter was right behind him and managed to catch Shawn's arm before he threw himself on his friend. "Spencer? Spencer, look at me!" But the psychic was looking over his shoulder, gaping at Guster on the floor, fighting against Lassiter's hold. And Lassiter knew that what he said in the next few minutes would be crucial.

"Shawn!" He said, and finally the man looked at him, eyes darting across and finally holding Lassiter's gaze. "Shawn," Lassiter began, voice firm but compassionate. He was trying to hold onto Spencer without putting too much pressure on that deformed shoulder, the one that was undoubtedly broken. "You need to leave this room. You need to go outside and call your father and tell him to meet us at the hospital. You will stay out there until the ambulance gets there and you will not come back in this room."

"But Gus -!" Spencer began, struggling feebly once again. At a different time Lassiter might not have been able to hold the man if he was mad with grief, but the broken shoulder or long day or pure anguish over his best friend's condition had taken some of the younger man's strength.

"I will take care of Gus." Lassiter said, shoving Spencer lightly towards the door. He turned once more before exiting, looking helplessly at his friend. "Go." Lassiter said, not unkindly. He wasn't all that surprised that Spencer sped out of the room, literally running away from his problems.

Lassiter settled beside Guster, looking at the man with what he hoped was a critical eye, trying to beat back the voice in the back of his head, the worried one that kept saying over and over that Guster, someone he'd known for four years (and come to like, because the man was a saint for putting up with Spencer for so long) was dying, was near death.

The detective had sent Spencer out because someone needed to direct the ambulance, because he looked like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But mostly he'd sent Spencer away because no one should ever have to watch their best friend die.

.***.

Shawn stumbled out of the house and looked blearily at the road two hundred feet away. They were relatively secluded in this little house. It was built alone on a lot with no neighbors, which explained why no one had come barging in when Gus first began to scream.

Gus…

He shivered, barely noticing his shoulder throb. The too-fast, too-worried beat of his heart took priority now, and all he could think of was Gus, hurting, near-death. Gus, who, even in his pain, had managed to save him, Shawn.

People had tried to draw analogies between Shawn and Gus. Shawn was Sherlock and Gus was Watson. Shawn was Batman and Gus was Robin. Always placing Gus in the sidekick position, because he wasn't the 'psychic' one. Because, if push came to shove, Shawn didn't really need Gus to solve the cases.

Except those people understood nothing, nothing, about their relationship. Thirty years they had known each other, and still the dynamic remained the same. Shawn would get himself in a load of hot water and Gus would bail him out. Shawn would do something brilliant but reckless and Gus would cover for him. They fed off each other, played off each other. Best friends for life, of course, but also the only brothers either had ever known.

It was only at that moment, standing outside the psycho's house, waiting for an ambulance to come and save him from his nightmare, that Shawn let himself realize how much he needed Gus, how much of his own personality was based off of his best friend. Never in his memory had he and Gus been separated, and now he was on his way to death…because someone knew. Someone knew that he was important to Shawn.

Shawn sucked in a breath, feeling the pain in his shoulder but banishing it to a far corner of his mind and basking instead in the pain of his heart. He so desperately wanted to go back inside (Shawn Spencer is not what anyone would describe as a person who waited around for others to do something) but the rational part of him – perhaps the only sane, rational part left – understood that Gus's best chance at life was already in the room with him.

A hand on his shoulder made him jump a foot, made his shoulder burn hot and finally forced the cry of pain from his lips.

"Shawn…"

"I'm okay, Jules." He said, putting a hand on her arm and focusing on the detective rather than all his pain. "You were amazing."

"I was taken out in the first fifteen seconds." Juliet pointed out, a hand to her temple. Her face was one big bruise, she had a pretty bad concussion, and the blood from the cut kept dripping into her eye. She knew that she'd gotten off lucky.

Shawn squeezed her arm, anchoring himself to this spot because if he didn't he'd be swept off in a wave of grief. But he had to ask. He had to know. "Gus?"

Juliet's sigh stopped his heart, "Shawn…"

"You have to tell me if he's alive, Jules. If you don't tell me I will run in there and…and…" He couldn't bluster about this. Couldn't, because the tears stinging his eyes were so not what he wanted to show in front of Juliet. Because Gus was his best friend. Because he wasn't sure if that pain in his heart would ever go away, no matter what the answer was.

Juliet hugged Shawn. An impromptu gesture for strength, for friendship, "He had a seizure right as I was waking up." She whispered in his ear, holding onto him tight so he wouldn't break for the door. "Lassiter got it under control but…Shawn…"

"I'm okay." He said, drawing away from the hug and wiping his eyes the back of his good hand. His voice shook, and his hand did nothing to stop the tears that dripped down his face, physical manifestations of his awful day. "No, I'm okay…I'll just go…I need to call my dad…"

He backed away from Juliet, from the house, from the situation, and drew out the cell phone. Juliet could only watch as he fumbled with it, only watch as one of the strongest men she knew broke into a thousand pieces right in front of her.

She only hoped they would have a chance to put him together again.

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	6. In Which There Are Hospitals

_"Rat," said the Mole, "I simply can't go and turn in, and go to sleep, and do nothing, even though there doesn't seem to be anything to be done." **The Wind in the Willows**_

.***.

Henry Spencer had had more than his fair share of heart-stopping moments. Living with Shawn did that to you.

Like the time when Shawn was four and convinced that if he sat around long enough Peter Pan would come to pick him up for Never Land. He decided to wait for said Pan in the open second-story window, and when Henry ran outside to see what his neighbors were looking at Shawn had waved happily, catching himself off-balance, and had toppled out the window.

He had that same feeling in his stomach now, twenty-five years later, as he'd had back then. Like his entire world was being turned upside-down by his son. He'd managed to catch Shawn when he was five and easy to hold, but since then his son had grown up and had, somehow, gotten out of his reach.

And he'd never admit this to anybody, but he was damn proud of his kid. Proud that he'd turned out to be not only a functioning member of society but a real asset. He thought that he could stand seeing the bumps and bruises on Shawn as he tumbled through cases as long as he knew his boy was a good man.

But that _call_…he'd never heard Shawn like that in his life. When he'd picked up the phone after jostling awake in the dead of night, he'd been expecting something, anything other than the high, scared voice of his only son telling him to come to the hospital.

"Shawn?" Henry said, tucking the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he snagged his keys off the counter, looked around for his coat, ready to run out the door. "Shawn, what happened?"

The sounds of an ambulance in the background, of men's voices, and Shawn wasn't talking to him anymore. "Shawn, answer me!"

"Dad, I have to go. I'll see you at the hospital." And then another voice in the phone, a young male voice asking Shawn where he was hurt….and Henry Spencer pulled on some jeans and sped out the door.

.***.

It was like he was in a dream. A really terrible dream. The kind that starts off being about warm beaches and great girls and long hours of nothing and turns suddenly into you being chased by clowns down dark, twisted alleys. The kind of dream where you wake up and don't really know who you are at all.

Shawn was in a different ambulance from Gus. That's what was killing him. Juliet had grabbed his arm and told him to go into the ambulance with her, and two other big paramedic guys had prodded him until he was sitting in that ambulance. "Gus…" He moaned, looking out the window to see a stretcher with his friend on it and Lassie jogging behind. He went for the door, but then the ambulance started moving and he was going the wrong way, away from his best friend in the world (his _dying_ best friend).

"No…I need to go to him…" He struggled. He may have even hit somebody because he _had_ to do this, had to get out of the ambulance and to Gus, because he didn't want his friend to die, nuh-uh, no way, and because once, after one of the many close-call cases they'd been on, Gus had looked at him and said, quite seriously, that he didn't want to be alone when he died.

Something like a needle went into his upper arm, and Shawn fell unconscious with Gus's name on his lips.

.***.

"He was the brother." Juliet said. She was with Lassiter in the waiting room after the paramedics that proclaimed her concussion not serious at all and released her into her partner's care, warning Carlton not to let her fall asleep for four to six hours. That was okay, though. Juliet had never felt more awake in her life.

"What?" Lassiter said, tearing his eyes away from the door that Shawn and Gus had passed through twenty minutes before. His mind was exactly thirty miles away, back at that house, back at that second when he turned away from Shawn's bound and bleeding hands to see Guster bleeding out on the floor.

"Maggie Lawson? The first victim? That guy in there, the guy who did…all of this…" Juliet took a deep breath, closed her eyes, opened them, but could still only see Shawn's shoulder as it had looked after the paramedics cut off his shirt. Mangled, shattered, like it wasn't really a shoulder at all. "He was her brother."

"Oh." Lassiter said. It was trivial, really, who had done this, or even why. Right now all he knew was that there were two men – two _good_ men – who were injured because they were tied to a police investigation. An investigation that _he_ had led.

Guilt settled into the pit of his stomach, and he shrugged off O'Hara's comforting hand. Without an outlet for his anger he was tempted to stomp his foot like a child and scream. Instead he punched the wall and barely dented the paper. The blood and bruises the action brought upon his knuckles was strangely satisfying and he wound up to do it again when his wrist was caught by a hand that was much too large and calloused to be O'Hara's.

"Not that I mind you maiming yourself, Lassiter, but if you don't give me information about my son_ right now_ I may have to redirect that fist." Henry Spencer's voice, low and demanding, was exactly what it took to bring Carlton back to his senses. An order was like a good slap in the face for him. It gave him direction.

"Mr. Spencer…" O'Hara said, rushing forward, and for the first time Carlton saw her. Really saw her. She looked exhausted, and the cut on his head and bruise on his eyes appeared painful and terrible in the harsh fluorescent lights. He winced at the sight of her face and berated himself for not insisting the young woman go home. "Mr. Spencer, Shawn's going to be fine…"

But Carlton knew better. He knew that only cold hard facts would help this situation. "Almost every bone on the left half of his body was broken. His clavicle was shattered, the humorous was fractured, and the AC joint…well, since his arm was nearly ripped from his body, it was pretty mangled. The doctors are trying to put him back together, but his shoulder will probably be more metal than bone."

Henry put a hand up to his mouth and closed his eyes for a second, trying to imagine his only son sustaining injuries that are bad enough to require a metal shoulder. "Okay…" he managed to say shakily. "How'd he get that?"

"A crowbar." Juliet murmured so quietly the two men stared at her. She gestured to her forehead and Henry winced sympathetically. "The guy was all set to kill Shawn, Mr. Spencer."

"What stopped him?" Henry asked, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth he wished he could summon them back. This felt too much like tempting fate. Shouldn't he just be happy that Shawn was mostly whole and mostly healthy and most definitely alive?

"Gus." Juliet said, eyes becoming more sad at just the name. "He must have grabbed my gun – I have no idea how, I thought he was dead when I saw him on the floor – by then I'd passed out and he must have seen the guy going for Shawn and just…just _shot_ him."

"So they're both okay?" Henry asked, looking anxiously at the door he knew his son was behind and waiting for the 'yes' to come out of Lassiter's mouth. When the younger detective shifted his weight and refused to meet his eyes, Henry didn't have to be an extremely perceptive man to know he was hiding something big. "They're both okay, right?" He asked again. "Shawn's just got the shoulder thing…"

"Yes." Juliet jumped in, nodding, "Just the shoulder."

"And Gus is alright. I mean, he shot a guy. He can't be…" Their faces made Henry shake his head slowly, made him ball his hand into a fist and punch the wall exactly where Lassiter had punched it right before he came in. "Damnit!" he said, over and over again. "Damnit!"

He kept punching the wall, because he really wanted to punch the psycho who'd hurt his son and the kid who'd been hanging around his house since Shawn learned how to talk. Because punching the wall was something he could do, because the pain was something he could control, and at that moment, standing around waiting for something to happen so he'd hear any news at all, he felt like he couldn't control anything else in the world.

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	7. In Which Reality Sets In

_The soul is silent. If it speaks at all, it speaks in dreams. **Louise Gluck**_

.***.

You couldn't really call what Shawn Spencer had that night a dream or even a nightmare. The colors were too harsh, too real, for it to be anything so simple as his own imagination. He was caught in a gaudy unreality, feeding off the good painkillers, the stuff they'd given him for the surgery. Feeding off the sheer pain of it all.

In the (dream/imagination/reality?) he was with Gus and they were younger. Sixteen. Seventeen. They were at the beach and Shawn was hating it. He always got burnt. Always. But Gus for once had been the one cajoling him into doing something, and they went down to the sea too early in May, too early in the day. They were alone.

And then, in the way of dreams, it shifted, moved, changed in a way that made sense only to the dreamer, a way that would never quite fit in if they ever had the inclination to retell the story. Suddenly, there was a car on the beach, one pulling up to younger Shawn and Gus, a Shawn and Gus on the cusp of adulthood and trying to cling to their last dredges of innocence, a Shawn of Gus who really knew nothing about the harsh realities of the world aside from what happened in bitter divorces and on the afternoon soaps.

The man in the car, shadowed, hooded, dark, pointed one long finger in their direction and beckoned to Gus, and suddenly the sunshine spilling over the horizon wasn't warm at all and the very air seemed grey and foreboding.

"Don't go, dude." Younger Shawn said, and younger Gus made a noise in the back of his throat, one that was supposed to be nonchalant to say _of course not_ but ended up sounding scared. They both tried walking away, but no matter how far they walked, how quickly, there was that car and that dark man and that one long finger always pointing.

Shawn pulled up short, stepping in front of Gus and tipping his friend a familiar smirk, the look he always gave when he thought he had the situation under control. "Yo, man, what'cha following us for? You keep chasing us away from all the places where the girls hang out and, frankly, the fact that you only seem to want my friend here is offensive and, dare I say, a little racist."

"Shawn!" Gus hissed, jerking his arm, and the lurid half-reality of the dream flared bright, the sun becoming a harsh, impossible yellow, the sea a stormy mix of grey and blue that could never have really existed.

"Him." The shadow said, and the finger left no room for error.

"I'm not going with you!" Gus shouted, voice definitely scared now but also holding some of the teenage belief that nothing in the world could really hurt him.

Except his words seemed to die in his throat when something else came out of the car. The cruel barrel of a gun pointed, safety off and ready to go, directly at Shawn.

What could they do? Young Shawn glanced helplessly at young Gus even as he raised his hands, an automatic gesture that he hoped fruitlessly would ward the man off. And young Gus swallowed hard at the sight of the naked fear in the eyes of his friend that was usually so incredibly _together_.

"Fine." Gus said, stepping towards the dark man in the dark car even as Shawn's hands scrambled to grab his arm and pull him back. What could Gus do? Better give himself up than watch Shawn die, watch his best friend's guts and blood and brain spill out over the beach that had once been so beautiful.

"No!" Shawn screamed, the same word that was on his lips when he woke up in the hospital room, older now, with a shoulder that was mostly metal and a throbbing heart.

His scream he managed to catch and swallow back down, but the tears that poured down his cheeks would not be stopped for anything.

.***.

Henry Spencer woke up with a jerk when he heard Shawn's mostly-muffled groan and was out of the uncomfortable chair in an instant, bad back be damned. He'd spent the early hours of the morning gnawing at his fingernails as his son went through surgery, anxiously checking his phone every fifteen seconds. He'd called the Gusters, but the outgoing message said, in voices too cheery for the current predicament, that they were in Singapore with Gus's sister, getting her settled in at a new job there.

He'd finally collapsed into the chair in Shawn's room around four in the morning right after a doctor had wheeled Shawn back in, saying that the surgery went well, though they'd had to take out the shattered shoulder bones and replace them with something like metal, which made Henry think idly of the old comic books Shawn and Gus used to read, the ones about cyborgs. But Shawn was alive…alive.

"Hey," Henry said, at Shawn's side in an instant. The clock on the wall said it was eight o'clock, which meant he'd only gotten four hours of sleep, but never before had he ever felt so awake. "Don't try to move, Shawn, you're only going to hurt that arm. Shawn!"

This last word was screamed because his son, in strict violation of Henry's last words, was struggling out of bed, eyes darting around the room. Henry pressed him back into bed at the same time as he looked around for a doctor, anyone. "Can we get a doctor in here?" He snapped, pushing Shawn down again. His hand rubbed against the bandages and Shawn turned so pale with pain that Henry was sure he was going to pass out. "Damn. Shawn!"

Fifteen minutes later, Shawn had been looked over by the same man who'd performed his surgery. "I hear you were in a pretty nasty spot." The man said pleasantly as he pressed lightly on certain points of the bandages. "But you came out of it all right. No significant trauma to the head, shoulder's looking good…it's going to be painful and physical therapy is a must, but if there's someone to look after you I see no reason why you shouldn't be released today."

"Today?" Henry asked, aghast. "My son was just kidnapped by a lunatic who tortured his best friend right in front of him. He's barely coherent, has more metal in his arm than the six-million-dollar man…and you're saying he can go today?"

"There's not much the hospital can do for emotional trauma." The doctor said gently, looping his stethoscope around his neck. "I can prescribe some anti-anxiety medication…maybe something to help him sleep…"

"Gus." Shawn said, grabbing the doctor's arm. It was the first word he'd managed to get out since he'd woken up. His throat felt strange, like it was filled with cotton and gum at the same time, and once that feeling passed he was afraid that if he said the word he'd start to cry in front of his father, and he wouldn't, couldn't do that. As if was, when he finally got the word out after fifteen minutes of trying, a few traitorous tears sprung, unbidden, from his eyes.

The doctor opened his mouth, closed it again, and then looked at Henry. "Can I talk to you outside?" He asked, and for the first time Henry noticed that the man who'd fixed his son's shattered shoulder was no older than Shawn, might, in fact, be younger. He looked tired, uncomfortable, and in need of a good long nap.

"Gus…" Shawn pleaded again, eyes wide, and Henry gestured to his son, a motion that meant that the doc might as well talk in front of Shawn, because he wasn't going anywhere.

"I wasn't his surgeon." The too-young doctor said apologetically, but Henry found himself liking the man for sitting down in the chair on the other side of Shawn's bed, for taking the time to talk to them at all. "But…well, you know how it is. We talk."

Henry nodded. He knew what the young man meant by "talk." Whenever a particularly nasty case came through the SBPD, they used to make jokes. Harmless jokes, small jokes, but if you didn't joke your way through some things you would burst with the seriousness of the situation.

"He's alive." The doctor said, rubbing his hand across his forehead. "In the ICU. Unstable. Needs two more surgeries before he's out of the woods. But he survived the night and that's a good sign. A really good sign." The doctor looked at Shawn, and Henry thought that the young man understood that they were the same age, that the man in the bed and the man with the doctors' official lab coat could very easily have had different destinies.

"I heard he saved your life. Shot the guy who busted your shoulder." And Henry found himself liking the man even more for touching Shawn's good hand as he said this. "That's some friend, man."

"Yeah." Shawn croaked, his mouth filling up with that cotton feeling again. "My best friend."

"Keep him around. You can't really put a price on best friends." The young man stood up and hovered in the doorway for a second, looking back at Shawn, too pale on the bed, and Henry with his fiercely protective look on his face. "This might be a bad time, but there's some police waiting outside. They say they know you."

"We'll talk to them later. At home." Henry laced his fingers through Shawn's and held onto them tight even as Shawn lost his battle with consciousness and went back into the hazy world of half-dreams. "I don't think my son has to go through re-living that ordeal so soon."

"Right." The young doctor said, ducking out of the room. He leaned against the wall for a second, just breathing, thinking about the black guy in the ICU and the man who's shoulder he'd spent the night fixing up, the one the EMTs said had been so distraught over the state of his best friend he'd nearly torn his fingernails off trying to get back through the ambulance door, the one who looked so frightfully pale right now.

The young doctor let out a huge breath and shook out the goose-pimply feeling that had spread up his arms before rushing down the corridor, thinking that right now he really, really needed to see his own best friend.

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	8. In Which There is Guilt on Both Sides

_Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens. **JRR Tolkien**_

.***.

The dream Gus had was more like a nightmare than a dream, a nightmare that is too much like reality for anyone's comfort, a nightmare that was nearly, frightfully real.

He was in the room, and his chest was on fire, and his arm was cold and hot, and the pain was strangely disconnected, as if someone else's arm was broken in half. Add his ankle and his chest and he felt like he was going to pass out from the pain (and some small part of him knew that he already had, that this was all just a dream but that thought was somehow pushed aside and the dream was reality again)

But there was the gun, and there was Shawn with his voice and his eyes, darting from Crazy Man to Gus and back, and saying to kill him, please, but spare Gus.

All Gus wanted to do was yell back at him, "who do you think you're protecting? If you die, I die." It was just that simple, wasn't it? If Shawn died…well, Gus's earliest memory was of he and Shawn in preschool, splitting a PB&J at the zoo.

"If you die, I die!"

But the words wouldn't come out because his chest hurt so damn much and it felt like he was bleeding on the inside, and Gus had a horrible vision of lungs and organs swelling with blood, of drowning without water, of dying and leaving Shawn alone with this madman.

So he went for the gun and fired, and something inside of Gus told him quietly that this had all happened before, hadn't it? But that part was smaller than the part that fired a second after the crowbar bashed into Shawn's head, a second after the light went out of Shawn's eyes, a second after his own heart broke in his chest with the knowledge that his best friend, his brother, was dead.

.***.

He woke up just before they put him under for his next surgery and grabbed tight to the doctor's wrist. It was a young guy, younger than anyone should be who was putting their hands into Gus's body but that wasn't what Gus was worried about.

"Shawn?" He needed to know for sure if the (dream/reality?) was true, because one way or the other…it was just better to know.

"I got this Caleb." Another man came in, pried Gus's too-weak fingers away from the first young doctor and held his hand tight. "I just saw your friend man. Shawn? He's looking good. Real good. He's worried about you too, though, so you got to stay strong through these surgeries, okay? You're gonna be famous, man. You're a hero."

And then the good drugs started to work and Gus passed out again, his hand still clutched in between both of the young doctor's hands.

.***.

This time he knew it was a dream, but that didn't make it any less scary.

"C'mon, Gus, we're playing Star Wars."

"I don't want to play Star Wars. You always make me be Lando and you get to Han. It's not fair." Young Gus, eight or nine year old Gus, crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn't backing down on this one. Han got the blaster and the girl and Lando got to fly a stupid plane while Han saved the day. He wanted to be Luke.

After some negotiations (read: fistfights) they came to the conclusion that Shawn would be Luke and Gus would be Han, and their mission was to take down Darth Vader (read: Shawn's dad.) They ran up to the front porch and looked inside. Gus said that he'd stay by the window and cover "Luke's" back as he went in to give the death blow.

"Cool." They saluted each other and said, in unison, "May the Force be with you." And then Shawn was gone, tip-toeing inside the house.

Gus put up his fake blaster, which was really Shawn's fake blaster. Gus's parents had gotten him the fake lightsaber for Christmas, and Shawn's dad had given him the fake blaster. They'd traded the day after, which just goes to show how much their parents knew about them.

"Pow." He said, pretending to pull the plastic trigger. "Pow. Pow." And then the trigger had pulled or something, because a real blast left the barrel and hit Shawn straight in the chest.

The last thing Gus saw was Shawn's young, surprised face turning around, mouth open in one incredulous word. "Gus?" Not believing, even with the incontrovertible evidence, that Gus could hurt him.

.***.

"Did you hear what this guy did, Caleb?"

"No, man. Was it a bar fight or something? His chest…I've never seen so many ribs shattered. He must have taken on ten guys."

"Naw, just one. A psycho. An honest-to-God psycho with a grudge against his friend. It's real torture tactics, you know. Make a guy watch their friend suffer. Our guy here was hit with a crow bar."

"How do you know about torture tactics, Mark?"

"My brother's in the Marines, dickhead. He talks about it after a couple of beers. Says watching somebody get hurt is worse than getting hurt yourself. And these two are, like, BFFs."

"BFFs? You're such a girl."

"Seriously. According to that hot police chick who's been hanging around they've known each other since they were born. They went into business together, too." A pause, and Gus still couldn't open his eyes, could only hear thoughtful chewing. Were these doctors seriously eating in his room? "Anyway, the psycho was beating on this guy here and then just…assumed he was dead, I guess. I mean, he looks it, right? And he turns on friend – Shawn, he's my patient upstairs - and must have been about to kill him, too, but our guy gets the police chick's gun and shoots the psycho with his broken arm."

A low whistle. "Wow. Jesus, this guy's lucky he'd not dead."

Rustling papers. "Burton Guster. Well, it's not Clark Kent, but this guy's a hero, Caleb." A thoughtful pause, and Gus felt a pat on his foot that wasn't broken. "A real goddamn hero. Who'd have thought we'd get to see one?"

.***.

When Gus drifted back into (sleep/drug-haze) he didn't dream. He just relaxed and didn't wake up for thirty hours.

The two young doctors wandered in and out of his room, waiting for a full story because they were now intrigued about these best friends-turned-partners, about the black guy's heroics.

Lassiter and Juliet dropped by after their shift. Lassiter stayed most of the night, watching the late-night soaps and Guster sleep and telling himself it was because he really had no one to go home to, not because he was all that worried about this guy.

Shawn left the hospital without seeing Gus, but those reasons didn't come out until later, until feelings were hurt and hearts were broken on both sides. But suffice to say that he was angry at himself, so angry, and feeling incredibly guilty.

Still, he left Gus in the hospital to wake up without him, and that - not going to the crime scene and getting kidnapped by a psycho - may have been the biggest mistake of his life.

.***.

When Gus woke up for real, it was fifty hours after his first surgery, and there was a man in his room eating an apple and reading a file.

His first instinct was to get the thing out of his mouth, the thing that was shoved down his throat and was making breathing difficult, but when he tried to lift up his arms he saw that one of them was encased in a cast from wrist to shoulder, and his other hand was completely wrapped in bandages.

That's when he started hyperventilating.

"Hey." The doctor said, coming forward and pinning Gus's arms to the bed. "You're okay. You're in a hospital. If you want I can take that tube out but…hold still."

One quick motion and Gus could breathe…and then he couldn't. The first deep breath he took made him cough, and the cough made his whole body hurt. When he finished the round of wincing and coughing, sweat was pouring down his face and that doctor was staring at him, concerned.

"I know, busted ribs suck, huh? I broke a couple in college. Football. You broke nine, though. Shattered nine." At Gus's panicked expression he hurried on. "But you'll be okay! Sore, and you have to stay here for a while. A week or two. But you're out of the woods. For a while there it was pretty touch and go. Let me tell you, man, I would have never gotten on a surgery like that for two years at _least_, but you came in at the exact right time. You're my hero."

Gus wasn't listening, he was trying to get a word out his mouth, the mouth that felt so dry he was sure that any friction, even just his voice, would tear like sandpaper. But never before had a question been so important. "Sh…"

"Shawn?" The young doctor guessed, touching his wrist, using his stethoscope to listen to something on his chest (and, God, even that little bit of pressure hurt.) "The guy you saved? He's fine. Got a bum shoulder now, and Caleb – he was in on your friend's surgery – says he kind of looks like a cyborg. But you definitely got the worst of it. A psychopath, right?"

Gus nodded, not even bothering to remember. He was already slipping back into darkness, this time not succumbing to drugs but instead heading towards some honest-to-God sleep.

"There's some cops that want to talk to you, but they'll drop by later. You're a real hero, you know that, Burton?"

"Gus." And that word was almost not strangled, almost sounded like his real voice, and he fell to sleep before it was really out of his mouth.

The young doctor, whose name was Mark, who had a best friend who'd worked on the hero's best friend, wrapped his stethoscope back around his neck. "Gus. Hero Gus." He shook his head and patted Gus's shoulder, the shoulder with the least amount of damages, before heading out for morning rounds.

.***.

When Gus woke up the second time, night had obviously fallen again and Lassie was sitting in his room, watching American Idol.

"You watch American Idol?" Gus said, and though he sounded like he needed a tall glass of lemonade he no longer sounded like he was going to croak right this minute, and Lassie obligingly got the water off the side table, the glass that had the straw in it so Gus could take a much-needed sip. "I didn't peg you for American Idol."

"Lay off, my dad got me into Aerosmith." Lassie said, muting Steven Tyler and J-Lo and turning back to Gus. "So…"

"You need to tell me how Shawn is." Gus said, his words coming out in little gasps. He couldn't take a big enough breath to sustain a sentence, not if he wanted to avoid the worst of the pain. "Where is he? Is he still in the hospital? What…?"

"Calm down, Guster, you're turning blue." Lassie said, putting a placating hand up, but though his words were calm his eyes flashed with concern. "Spencer is fine. He went home almost two days ago. I already got his statement."

"He went home?" Gus asked disbelievingly. He was relieved, happy that his friend was okay, well enough to be out of the hospital at least, and then something like sick dread curled in the pit of his stomach. Maybe it was selfish, but he wanted Shawn _here_, waiting for him to wake up so that he could tease Gus mercilessly about not ducking when he was hit by a crowbar or something, wanted Shawn there to make the whole thing seem less serious, less real, and Shawn always managed to say the thing to take his mind off of everything, even pain.

"Yeah." Lassie said, pulling his small notebook out of his pocket. "Look, I know you're tired but I need to verify this statement. Just so we can file all the paperwork, you know? I mean, it's pretty obvious from your injuries that you killed Lawson in self-defense."

The words hung in the air for ten seconds, fifteen seconds, before Gus really processed them. When he did, his heart rate increased so much the monitor beside his bed started beeping crazily. "I actually killed him? I killed that guy?"

"Yeah." Lassie said, brow furrowing. "You mean you don't remember?"

"I remember Shawn screaming, and the guy was about to bash his brains in, and I wanted to do something…Juliet's gun was there…I wanted to get it but…I don't remember…I must have picked it up…" He looked up, desperately hopeful. "You're kidding, right? I couldn't have killed him."

"Guster, you need to calm down." Lassie said, voice so full of unexpected authority that Gus complied, his heart rate slowing into a normal range. Lassie let silence reign for a moment before continuing, with grudging admiration, "There was no other option. He was going to kill Spencer."

"I've never killed anyone before."

Lassie's expression softened and he collapsed into the chair. His eyes met Gus's for a second and then flicked away. "I'm no good at this, Guster. I can't tell you all the psychological crap O'Hara reels off." His voice hardened, became solemn, serious. "But I can say, for what it's worth, that I'm damn proud of what you did."

"Thanks, Lassie." Gus muttered, tears springing unbidden to his eyes. He couldn't even wipe them away with his hands encased in plaster.

The room was quiet for a moment, with only the soft murmur of nurses outside and the steady beep of machines to let them know that time was, indeed, passing. Gus managed take a few deep, shuddering breaths, willing the tears back in.

He'd killed a man. Ended somebody's life. And even the fact that he'd done it to save his best friend, to save somebody he loved, didn't negate the fact that, if it wasn't for Gus, there'd be another man walking around alive today.

"Guster?" Lassie's voice, uncharacteristically gentle, snapped Gus out of the memory of the man's wide, blank eyes just before the crowbar smashed his ribcage. He realized he had been on the verge of hyperventilating and thanked God for Carlton Lassiter. "Do you want me to call a doctor?"

"No." He said, happy that his voice was almost steady now.

"Can I take your statement?" Lassie asked, still gently. "Or would you rather O'Hara do it?"

Gus had to swallow back the bile that rose in his throat at the thought of recounting the gruesome details to Juliet's shocked face. "You." He said forcefully, and Lassiter nodded in understanding. "What do you want to know?"

"Spencer gave us most of the details. Since the guy's already dead, there's no chance of the perp getting away, so it doesn't have to be formal. This is just to submit to the judge when he writes off the guy's death as self-defense."

"Okay." Gus said, taking a deep breath. Readying himself, reminding himself that he was the one in control and at the same time wishing desperately that he didn't have to do this alone. That Shawn was by his side, signing all his casts with ridiculous sayings, doing simple, helpful things without making it seem like he did them at all. He wanted Shawn to be Shawn, always completely confident and in control.

But Shawn wasn't there, hadn't shown up once, and Gus had to do this by himself.

"What do you need to know?"

**Review?**


	9. In Which They Still Won't See Each Other

_The sad truth is that the truth is sad. **Lemony Snicket**_

.***.

Shawn was surprised to see Juliet standing on his doorstep at eight o'clock in the morning, a tray of coffee and donuts balanced in one hand, a newspaper tucked under her arm. "What's going on?"

"I should be asking you that question." She said, breezing by him and dropping the breakfast on the junk-covered table. "Where have you been?"

"Umm…here?" Was this a trick question? "Should I be somewhere else?" Because he wasn't going back to Psych this week. Maybe not ever.

"How about at the hospital next to the guy who saved your life?" Juliet bit out. "You know how this is probably making him feel? His parents are gone, and their flight isn't until Sunday because Singapore and Santa Barbara don't exactly have a hundred connecting flights. He's in the hospital, more hurt than he's ever been in his life and his best friend isn't even there."

"I can't." Shawn said, eyes darting to the walls, the ceiling, anywhere but Juliet's accusing gaze.

"You were there, Shawn! You get what he's going through!" Juliet reached a hand towards him. "I mean, getting kidnapped by a guy who is set on killing you is one thing, but getting beaten within an inch of your life? Gus must be terrified."

"What about me?" Shawn said, jerking his arm back from Juliet's hand. "I had to watch! I thought…" He looked up at the ceiling, blinking hard. The doctors had said that those pills that made the nightmares blurry, hazy, would also wreak havoc on his emotions. He'd been on the edge of tears just watching PBS. He managed to collect himself this time, something for which he was supremely grateful. No way was he crying in front of Juliet.

When he looked at her again, his eyes were red, but dry. "I thought he was dead. I thought that he was going to die in front of me. And you know what I did? Egged him on. I told Lawson that if he killed Gus I would feel nothing. That it wouldn't affect me at all."

"Oh, Shawn." Juliet sighed, hand going to his arm again and this time it wasn't jerked away. "I'm sure you were doing it for a good reason. You love Gus."

"I thought that if I could convince him that Gus was just a regular guy – he wanted revenge on the police department, but I already told you that. And Lassie was in the room…I said it should have been him being tortured in that room." Shawn put a hand on the back of his neck, rubbing and rubbing that that spot where his shoulder became a lump of bandages. "I should probably say something to Lassie, huh?"

"I think he would die of shock if you apologized." Juliet said, smiling thinly.

"Probably." Shawn remembered the expression on Gus's face when he told Lawson that his best friend's death would be no great loss and shuddered violently as if cold. His father, who had been over his apartment so many times in the last couple of days with the barest of excuses, had gotten into the habit of draping a jacket over Shawn's shoulders. Weird. He'd never gotten cold before.

"Look, Shawn, you did everything you could. You said that you told Lawson to take his aggression out on you. You convinced him you were a detective just to help your friend."

"Some help I was." Shawn turned and stared blankly around the kitchen. "He still…" but he shrugged, not even able to finish the sentence. He was so cold, chilled by the memory of Gus lying in front of him after the gun went off, looking quite dead. He rubbed his wrists, the place where all the skin had come off while he was trying to escape, to get to Gus. He should have tried harder. Gus had been on the verge of… "Lassie was more help than me. He knew what to do."

"You need to see Gus, Shawn." Juliet said, her voice not harsh but firm. "Do you even know why you guys work so well together? Why you've lasted all these years? It's because you're a paranoid, compulsive guy who happens to notice all the details and Gus mellows you out. I think he's the only one who can help you through this."

Gus was used to saving Shawn. He'd been there for him a thousand times before, would be there for Shawn now if he could just bring himself to go to the hospital. Somewhere inside, Shawn knew that he couldn't conquer this alone. The nightmares would keep coming, the same as that awful chill, and the pain in his wrists and shoulder and heart, until he saw Gus, until they talked this through.

But why would Gus want to see the guy that had put him in so much danger? Shawn had been nothing but a nuisance in his friend's life. Juliet was right – Gus was good for him. Logic to his emotions, the planner to his devil-may-care whimsy. But Shawn had nothing to offer in return, nothing except putting Gus in harm's way time after time, without even acknowledging the hurt he was heaping on his friend.

"Please, Shawn."

But he was finished listening to this. Didn't she think he wanted to see Gus? More than anything in his life. Gus had been his constant, his anchor. But he was trying to do the right thing now – the thing he should have done years ago, if he was truly the friend he thought he was. Gus had lost his job because of Psych, nearly lost his life because of Shawn. No more. This would be a clean break. He wouldn't put Gus in harm's way again. He loved him too much to do that.

"Please leave." Shawn said, leaning against the table, looking at a spot on the floor. There was a sigh, the sound of a door opening, the slam as it closed. Then nothing.

.***.

Gus realized that moving just made everything worse, so he spent the days when he was awake and high enough on pain killers to be able to concentrate watching daytime soaps. It reminded him of his childhood, when he'd spent all of his sick days in front of a similar television watching similar stories. And, of course, thinking of his childhood just reminded him of Shawn.

Shawn.

"Hey." The single word ripped Gus from the dark abyss the thought of his best friend was sure to plunge him into, and he moved his head just a little. Even that small movement was difficult, painful. But the smile he doled out was genuine.

"Hello." He said to Henry Spencer as the man sat down at his bed. Unlike his son, Henry had come to see him every day, coming in and usually staying until Gus fell asleep again. Sometimes he'd wake up to the man's face, lined with the pain that Gus now knew so well. And why not? Long ago, Gus had started thinking of Henry as another father. Perhaps Henry also thought of him as a son.

"How you holding up?"

With so many broken ribs, he'd been put under strict orders to not move a muscle. And while lying still for weeks on end (the doctors had said two weeks, maybe three, and then he can finally move) might sound like a vacation to many people (Gus included), it does get old after six or seven hours. So he had the soaps, he had the nurses, those doctors that liked to hang in his room, Caleb and Mark. He had Lassie and Juliet, who each came in at least once a day, more often twice. He had Henry Spencer. He had enough.

Or at least that's what he was trying to convince himself.

"Can't complain." Gus shrugged. "A little boring, but…"

"Gus," Henry leaned forward, hands on knees, sincere expression painted across his face, "You were just brutally attacked. You killed a man. You wound up in the hospital. And your best friend refuses to see you even though he's perfectly fine." By the end, there was a thread of rage stringing his words together, and Gus winced. It hurt.

"I'm sorry for what happened to Shawn." Gus said softly, "I only killed Lawson because I thought…and I wouldn't have been able to stand it if…but I get why Shawn doesn't want to see me. I understand." He sighed. Sometimes, when you get what you want, you end up losing the thing that's most important.

"What? There is no excuse for what my son is doing. He should be thanking his lucky stars you were there at all, and were conscious enough to pull the trigger – which, if you believe those hotshot kid doctors, is a miracle onto itself."

"Shawn grew up with you, Mr. Spencer." Gus pointed out, wishing, not for the first time, that he could move his hands. He talked better with his hands. "You kind of ingrained in him a pretty good sense of right and wrong."

Shawn's world was black and white. Murderers were always caught and always got what was coming to them. Victims were avenged by the catching of these criminals. Gus had killed in self-defense, but would this shade of grey matter to his best friend? Gus didn't think so. Shawn wouldn't be Shawn if he didn't think on some level that Gus was an animal, a monster for what he did.

More than anything, he wanted Shawn sitting next to him, bringing in different horror movies and joking about the comparisons between mild-mannered Gus and Freddy Kruger now that his wild side had been unleashed.

But that was something that would never happen. Gus understood that there are some things that even the best of friends cannot look past, and murder is one of those things.

**Review?**


	10. In Which There is Closure

_I'll be there for you (when the rain starts to pour) I'll be there for you (like I've been there before) I'll be there for you ('cause you there for me too.) **Rembrants**_

.***.

It was two days before Shawn went down to the hospital, and that only happened because of a careful subterfuge laid out by Lassie of all people.

Carlton Lassiter is not known in any circles for his subtlety, nor is he renowned for creativity, but he nodded at both of these fields when he woke Shawn Spencer up at seven am to drive him down to the "station" for more "debriefing."

"Seriously, Lassie? I must have been asked a million questions about all this. Really, it's a little insulting that the only case the media seems to really care about is the one I screwed up the most. They couldn't have picked anything else to be interested in? I would have come off very well if they knew about how we infiltrated the Chinese mob or stopped a bank heist. Twice."

"Technically Spencer, about half the cases you "solve" you have no business being involved in. And the reason the press is all over this case is because people are attracted to the word _psychopath_ and you just happened to get in the way of one."

"I still don't see what else you can possibly ask me. My life would be much easier if I had just hung onto that camera that Gus got me for Christmas and turned it into a button cam like they use in bad spy movies."

"What happened to the camera?" Lassiter asked, then cursed himself for acting even remotely interested.

"The bear at the zoo ate it." Spencer said distractedly, and for the millionth time in his life Cartlon wondered if anything the man next to him said was true. "You missed the turn." Shawn pointed with his left arm, since his right was still immobilized against his body, and then the appendage flopped to the seat. "You're not taking me to the station."

"No."

"We're going to see Gus in the hospital."

"Yes." Lassiter glanced sideways at Spencer, who looked like he was contemplating whether to risk his remaining arm by jumping out of a moving vehicle. "I can't believe you haven't been there before now. Guster's been asking for you."

It was true. There were a couple of docs, young kids who were probably even younger than the young man sitting next to Lassiter right now, who'd taken a shine to Guster and his heroic story. They sat with him whenever anyone else didn't, and had told Lassie the night before that the patient seemed anxious, moody, and had gotten into the habit of perking up hopefully whenever the door opened, only to wilt when anyone – Mr. Spencer, Juliet, sweet old McNabb – came in. He was looking for someone, and that someone just wasn't showing up.

"No he hasn't." Shawn said miserably, sounding for all the world like a sullen teenager, and Lassie suddenly wished he'd taken the older Spencer up on his offer to knock some sense into his son. "There's no reason in the world why he'd want to see me."

"There's not many people in this world who can say they have a best friend who would literally kill for them." Lassie said, his lips barely moving. "And there are not many people who can say that they have a two decade old friendship. Really, Guster should be sainted for putting up with you."

Lassiter, as a rule, thought of Spencer and his sidekick as little as possible, but they'd intruded on his investigations so often in the past four years that he simply could not help but notice some things. Like how he felt a stab of jealousy anytime the two interacted, moving around each other in the way he'd only seen very old couples and close siblings do. As if they knew each other so well they could anticipate the other's move.

"I hurt him, Lassie." Shawn said, sounding so miserable that Lassie actually felt bad for the guy. "I kept poking at the case, even when the department told me to leave it alone. If I hadn't been so stubborn then he wouldn't have gotten…" He trailed off and bit his lip, forcing the words to an end. And then he started again just as abruptly, before Lassie could say whatever needed to be said in that silence.

"When I woke up in that room…I knew as soon as I realized I was tied up and Gus wasn't what was going to happen. It's kind of inevitable, you know? So many dangerous criminals, you're bound to get a crazy in there someone. Some guy who just likes hurting others for the heck of it." Shawn scrubbed a hand over his face, let out a deep, shuddering sigh. "And that's the meat and potatoes, you know? I knew from the beginning, from when we started Psych, that something like this was going to happen. And I let Gus help me. I practically forced him to."

They were at the hospital now, and Shawn seemed to be collapsing in on himself, arms and legs drawing close to the middle of his body at the prospect of having to face his convalescing best friend. Lassie forced his tongue to work, made the words come out. Because this is the reason why he went to Shawn. He, Lassiter, not Juliet or Spencer's father, had the most unbiased insight into the man. And Shawn was occasionally wild and certainly reckless, but he was never cruel and would never deliberately injure another person.

"I think that Gus was going to follow you wherever you went. I think he knows that you need him to pull you out of trouble."

.***.

Gus lit up when he saw Shawn hovering in the doorway, and then remembered that he had killed a man and bit his lip, looked away. It was only the two of them – Lassie had warned the rest of the staff away from the room, warned visitors away. It needed to be just them.

"I was going to leave." Shawn said, but Gus still couldn't look at him. He felt dirty, as if the man's blood was still visible on his hands, on his heart. But Shawn talked anyway, fast and high-pitched, the way he always talked when nervous or covering up being nervous. "Get on my bike and head out east, like I did when we graduated high school. I thought that would have been better for everyone, but I can't…my arm." He swallowed and looked at the ground, and then back at Gus. "Man, Gus, please. Look at me. Please."

And Gus dragged his eyes up, lingering on the arm that was covered in bandages and secured with a sling. He gulped, then moved up to Shawn's face, wild with concern and…and guilt? "I'm so sorry." Shawn said, crossing the room in three great strides and collapsing in the chair next to Gus's bed. He clasped Gus's uninjured hand in his uninjured one, light skin on dark like it had been since childhood. "Gus I…if I'd known this would happen I would have _never_…" But he looked up, because Gus had said his _I'm sorry_ along with Shawn, and Gus's grip was hard and nervous too.

"What are you sorry about?" Shawn asked, confused. "I was the one who started stupid Psych in the first place. I was the one who pursued the Maggie Lawson. It was my fault that you got kidnapped and hurt and almost…" But he couldn't say the word _died_. He just shut his mouth, breathed hard through his nose. His arm throbbed dully under the bandages. He'd stopped taking the pain medication a couple of days ago, because they made him dizzy and strangely emotional. Because, on some level, he knew he deserved the pain because he'd put Gus through worse.

"I killed that guy." Gus said, his words so small and hopeless that they cracked along the edges. "I killed him and I don't even feel bad about it, because I did it to save you, but I can't…I'm just as bad as those people we put behind bars, Shawn. I _killed_ somebody."

"Gus…" Shawn said, shaking his head. "Gus, no, you've got it wrong. It was self-defense, man. Self-defense. Anyone can see it. He was taking a crowbar to your ribs, man." Here Shawn glanced at Gus's torso, bandages and bruised, and winced. "He broke your ankle. He was going to kill you."

He could tell that none of these arguments were getting through to Gus. Mild-mannered Gus, who was the voice of reason, the responsible one, would of course freak out over killing someone, even if that someone was a psychopath.

"He would have killed me." Shawn muttered, locking eyes with his oldest friend. "He was just about to put that crowbar through my head. He'd already taken out my arm. Would you rather that? Me dead? I wouldn't blame you. This is definitely the shittiest thing I've ever done to you, and I've done a whole lot of shitty things in our lives."

"No." Gus said, shaking his head. He couldn't believe Shawn would even suggest that. "I couldn't live if you died."

"It's a two way street, buddy. I couldn't have lived if you'd died either." Shawn looked through his eyelashes at Gus, and he suddenly looked younger than he had in a long time. "Do you forgive me for not seeing you? I just…I thought that it would have been better just to take off. I make your life so dangerous."

"You make it worthwhile." Gus said firmly. He had to wait a few seconds, because his ribs still weren't what they should be and all the talking made him gasp at the pain that flared…everywhere. "Without you, I don't know what I'd do."

"Ditto, man." Shawn said, smiling almost like the old Shawn Spencer would have smiled. "I would say that we hug it out, but you're not in the best position to do that, huh Charles Manson?"

"Look who's talking. A few more metal limbs and you can be Darth Vader."

"Take that back!"

"You're the one who compared me to a serial killer. I'm just returning the favor."

"Not with the villain of our childhood! C'mon, Gus, that's so not fair."

"I broke seventeen bones for you, Shawn!"

"You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

"It happened less than a week ago!"

Lassie leaned against the wall outside the room, listening to the familiar banter through the thin walls. He smiled at Juliet, tiredly resting in a similar position on the opposite wall, at Mr. Spencer right next to him. They had their psychic detectives back.

Life was normal again.

**.***.**

**the end.**

**really, we can't describe how much we love psych. unless you haven't gotten it by now, we're not naturally comedic writers, so the witty banter that makes this show amazing may be lacking. it's not the fandom's fault, we're just not funny people.**

**anyway, for those of you who stuck with us we're truly thankful. make the most out of the rest of your summer. spend it with a best friend. we'll see you back here when psych starts again.**

**us**


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